Future Notes

Minister Rohee’s announcement that the government has agreed to change the name of the police in Guyana from the Guyana Police Force to the Guyana Police Service was greeted by some of my drinking colleagues with much hilarity.

Future Notes

If anything proves that the PPP/C has discounted receiving African votes in the near future it must be its decision to change the proposed site of the 1823 monument from the Independence Square to Carifesta Avenue and its administratively incorrect and flimsy excuse for doing so!

Future Notes

Lest we succumb to the hopelessness that can very easily result from what has been a most acrimonious and debilitating political year, the holiday season presents a good opportunity for us to take a short break and turn our minds in other directions.

Across the political divide, after a year in office, the populace appears to have given up any expectations that, with the exception of national elections sometime soon, much will result from the presidency of Mr.

Cheddi Jagan was extremely proud of his government’s commitment to transparency and one of the most visible signs of this was his government’s ability to present the annual Auditor General’s Report after many years of default under the PNC regime.

Cross Border Career Stretch in the Teaching Profession (cont’d)
Since the idea is not to prevent but rather to facilitate an overseas career for those who wish it and have performed well, government can be more proactive in arranging such recruitment and putting reengagement incentives in place.

The current quarrel between the government, the Speaker of the National Assembly and the opposition over the content of the first Order Paper (parliamentary agenda) of this new parliamentary year keeps us in the same mode that has developed since the last general elections: a government blustering its way in the hope of finding an opportune moment to call a new election and an opposition determined to close the noose around the government’s neck.

The first of the thirty-two recommendations found in the 2012 Guyana Report on Aging (the Report) states that “Associations of Older Persons could help educate about the rights of the elderly and promote their active participation in the community activities”.

“Even though, the growing ageing population and the concomitant changes this will bring are viewed as a major socio-economic challenge for Guyana, other competing development priorities have overtaken the national agenda.

Aging, along with and its moral and practical implications is so visible that most societies have had to establish norms to deal with it, but as Thomas R Cole, et al, observed in The Meaning of Aging and the Future of Social Security, “the ancient and medieval understandings of aging as a mysterious part of the eternal order of things gradually gave way to the secular, scientific, and individualist tendencies of modernity.

This intervention was motivated primarily by a report in the Stabroek News that from ten Caribbean programmes which were highlighted as “best practices” for the provision of services to the elderly by the Third Regional Intergovernmental Conference on Ageing in Latin America and the Caribbean, which took place recently in Costa Rica, Barbados was recognised for three of its programmes: the Home Care Programme, Nursing Pilot Project and its Information Communication Technology Programme.

Even allowing that the unconscionable shooting and killing of protesters at Linden may have complicated matters for the government, how is it possible for a ruling party to concede so much on the major issues brought to the table by the other side but yet achieve so little?

“The President’s pension and the Prime Minister’s pension shall be seven-eighths of the highest annual rate of salary paid to such persons at any time as President or Prime Minister as the case may be or two hundred and four thousand dollars per annum, whichever is the greater,” says the 1991 amendment to the Pensions (President, Parliamentary and Special Officials) Act Chapter 27:03, which now appears extremely dated.

It is generally believed that the presidency of Mr. Bharrat Jagdeo constituted one of the most autocratic periods in the post-independence political history of Guyana in spite of the fact that he did not have control of both the government and the PPP the way Cheddi and Janet Jagan did.

My last three articles focused on the need to radically reform the undemocratic/illiberal nature of the PPP, rooted as it is in old and misunderstood autocratic doctrines such as democratic centralism and vanguard party.

Notwithstanding the present stagnation in the area of political reform, I believe that our political parties are on the cusp of major restructuring and that John Maynard Keynes was perhaps correct when he claimed that: “The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood”, for even today, notions like “democratic centralism” and “party paramountcy,” rooted as they were in autocratic political cultures that are either dead or in their death throes, are still being used to explain contemporary issues.

For those who have some understanding of the nature and workings of political parties, a few weeks ago we were treated to a quite extraordinary exchange between former speaker of the National Assembly, Mr.

If they were unaware of it before, the recent hoopla about the cuts that were made to the 2012 budget by the opposition has certainly enlightened the citizenry as to the limitations on the role of the National Assembly in the budget process.

If the public reaction to last week’s article (Cheddi’s mantra was `give them the books’ SN: 16/05/12) is anything to go by, discussions between the government and the opposition on financial matters will not bear much fruit anytime soon.

“Interest and objectives are two sides of the same coin. They are closely related, yet being able to differentiate one from the other can often make all the difference during negotiations.” (Godefroy C & Luis Robert – 1991 – “The Outstanding Negotiator” Piatkus).

The Stabroek News, quoting GINA, reported that in response to the statement by Opposition Leader, David Granger “that he is ready for Government to seek a supplementary budget provided that certain conditions are met, President Ramotar said that he is not running a `casino-type’ operation and maintains that all decisions will be based solely on what is in the best interest of Guyana and its people.” (“Gov’t to uphold APNU pacts – Ramotar:” SN: 30/04/2012).

For a country that has remained the poorest in the English speaking Caribbean and one of the poorest in the northern hemisphere notwithstanding its abundant agricultural and mineral, to say nothing of human resources, the prospect of our finding oil in the near future has generated an almost reckless optimism.

Of the seven Caribbean countries surveyed in the recent United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Citizens Security Survey, Guyana has experienced the greatest loss in human development caused by inequality between the respective achievements of men and women.

Two weeks ago (“PPP/C has an historic opportunity …..:” SN 25/01/12) I promised to address what it is that politicians can mean when they claim that their policy or actions are based on ‘principle.’ This interest arose from what appeared to be an unusual amount of reliance on this concept in our recent political discourse.

“I mean, since David Granger opposed Nagamootoo because, ipso facto, the defecting may very well be a ‘spy job’ in the making, then what exempts Trotman from that kind of suspicion (from the rest of the lot)?

Notwithstanding all the opposition talk of seeking to create a new political culture in Guyana, its recent antics are as old as the hills, but the PPP/C is not without fault and should not use the opposition’s faux pas to prevent us from moving forward in a timely and efficacious manner.

The current discourse about the election of a speaker for our new National Assembly has been variously described and assessed but here I will discuss the opportunity it presents us to identify and contemplate some important issues, the nature of which are likely to stay with us as we go forward in the present political context.

“The literature suggests that among the non-school factors of school achievement like socioeconomic background, parent’s educational attainment, family structure, ethnicity and parental involvement, it is the latter which is the most strongly connected to attainment.” It has long been known that parental involvement is a powerful tool for enhancing pupil achievement and most schools here and elsewhere try to devise ways of involving parents.

If President Donald Ramotar wants to represent change in and modernisation of the Guyanese political fabric, one of his first priorities must be to put a rein on the type of propaganda with which the PPP has been historically associated.

Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s “Evil Genius” and Reich Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment, who is generally believed to be responsible for bringing that seventeenth century Vatican-created term “propaganda” into disrepute, stated that: “That propaganda is good which leads to success, and that is bad which fails to achieve the desired result ….